How can Dr Martens find its feet again?

Dr Martens’s chief reason for its financial struggles was its US wholesale business, with key customers placing “weaker” orders compared with previous years.

So why, then, have Dr Martens’s customers lost faith in its brand?

Amazon and Walmart are two of Dr Martens’s major wholesalers. Claire Leon, co-founder of Brandtech Group-owned Acorn-i, uncovered data about how shoppers buy Dr Martens through its commerce partners. Despite there being over 150 Dr Martens products available for sale on Amazon channels (UK and US), it is estimated that over 90% of the sales are through resellers such as Zappos.

Leon says that by allowing third-party sellers to own this core retail sales channel, Dr Martens is losing out on brand messaging. Timberland, by comparison, has a strongly branded Amazon shop with interesting videos and imagery, as well as links to its sustainability communications.

“By taking better ownership of its shop shelf and taking advantage of the variety of marketing tools available to it on Walmart and Amazon, Dr Martens has the scope to better control its brand consistency and messaging and to ensure a full end-to-end understanding of its digital shopper.”

Is it living by its punk values?

Turhan Osman, creative director of House 337, says Dr Martens is no longer on his radar. Osman worked on the Dr Martens account from 2016 to 2019 and says he hasn’t seen the brand evolve its advertising since. “It has still got similar art direction and video editing. It is still executionally that same stuff we were doing in 2016.”

Being a bold punk brand is what made Dr Martens world famous, but as the company has grown, it has lost some of that activist spirit, explains Osman. At a time when Gen Z “wants a brand that stands up for what they believe in,“ Dr Martens seems to have retreated from that role.

“It missed that zeitgeist moment where brands realized they had a bigger social responsibility and embraced that,” Osman says. Based on its roots in punk and anarchy, Dr Martens is one of the few companies that can get away with being an activist brand. He recommends that it partner with eight “changemakers” campaigning for social causes and raise their profile as Dr Martens’s personalities.

A recent piece of content Dr Martens to campaign about Black women in the music industry being paid 25% less than white women is an example of what Osman thinks the brand should be doing more of.

Another way for Dr Martens to stay in culture is by expanding the meaning of punk beyond the Camden scene and The Clash. “The Clash were punk in their spirit back then, but in terms of attitude, Stormzy could also be seen as punk,” says Osman. “It should have doubled down in terms of cash and gotten a big celebrity who embodied that new punk.”

Osman does acknowledge, however, that during his time working with Dr Martens, the business was still transitioning to private ownership. “Being part of a much bigger business, that reactive nature or willingness to change aggressively or be brave and take risks is just not in there as a business,” he says.

In 2021, The Drum postulated on whether the brand could keep its place in counterculture as its business expanded and joined the stock market.

Has Dr Martens alienated its loyal fans?

A different criticism of Dr Martens is that in the pursuit of new (ie, younger) customers, it has lost some brand loyalists. Over the years, it has added sandals (which represent 9% of global sales), clogs, heels and loafers to its product range. As part of its plans to fix its US trading woes, Dr Martens said boots would be its primary focus.

In a tough trading environment, it’s tempting to push as many products as possible, says Susan Pratchett, president of Spring Studios London, the agency behind campaigns for Victoria Beckham and Mulberry. “The challenge now for the brand is staying committed to the focus on boots and prioritizing it over short-term gains,” she says. “Consistency will be key – telling the same story, reinforcing the equity, fixing the quality issues with the product and optimizing the pricing and retail environment.”

Dr Martens launched its ’Made Strong’ brand platform in November. Along with a TVC, it ran a series of events, out-of-home and social activity. Although it is too early to assess how well the campaign performed, its outgoing chief executive officer, Kenny Wilson, said the business saw “a big step forward in brand PR coverage.” The New York launch event, for example, had 1,200 attendees, 300 media attendees and a social reach of over 22 million people.

Pratchett says Dr Martens’s latest brand campaigns feel like the right strategy and approach. “Bringing the focus back to the core of the brand, which is boots and product strength, and reinterpreting that for today’s world; it’s at the brand’s heart and what sets it apart from everyone else.”

However, while she credits these campaigns for “opening up new voices and communities,” Pratchett says there is an opportunity to extend the strategy and platform to its core “loyalist“ (the older consumer) and to “nurture the existing passion-based communities around the brand.”

Can it learn from brands such as Clarks?

Osman looks to the recent Clarks resurgence as an example of what Dr Martens should have done. With an equally rich heritage in culture, Clarks has “done a great job of re-educating a new audience what it stood for,” he says. Through a mixture of long and short content and collaborations with the likes of Kurupt FM, “it has become culturally relevant again to a certain demographic.”